Grotesgue as it seems, the story sounds entirely too plausible to me.
You must live in a state of grace, or a hermits cave if you have not experienced something similar.
These things happen, the guy did not even need to make the 30 cent error to experience something like this.
He was lucky he found a judge willing hear the facts instead of copping a “this must be BS, pay the upstanding GMAC (or Countrywide or your choice of financial institution), as they could neither err nor cheat”.